A vehicle steering system contains a steering gear assembly that moves a steering rack linearly. The rack is connected by ball joints and tie rods to the front wheels of the vehicle. Each ball joint is protected from the environment by a rubber boot. As the driver turns the steering wheel, the steering gear assembly moves the rack in one direction or the other to effect a turn. This movement causes one boot to compress and the other boot to expand. This expansion and compression causes air pressure changes inside the rubber boots, potentially causing excessive expansion or collapse of a boot. Excessive expansion or compression causes premature wear of the boots exposing the ball joints to the environment. To protect against excessive expansion and compression, the boots have heretofore been connected by a breather tube extending between the boots. Naturally, the transfer of air between the boots allows pressure to remain equalized thereby preventing collapse or excessive expansion. While the breather tube works, it requires assembly, provides potential leakage points, and complicates packaging.
With a hollow rack, conventional approaches use either separate holes cross-drilled through the rack outer diameter or a system of cross-drilled holes in the ball joint housing to serve as connector passageways to the hollow rack to manage the air flow between the boots. These cross-drilled holes increase design and manufacturing complexity, and can also weaken the ball joint socket housing. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that it would be highly desirable to connect the boots without cross-drilling the rack or ball joints, increasing leakage points, and without complicating design, manufacturing or packaging.